


Toast the Defiant

by ThoughtfulFangirl



Category: MMFR, Mad Max Fury road, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Eating Disorders, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulFangirl/pseuds/ThoughtfulFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Furiosa defied the Citadel, she was placed by Immortan Joe to guard his "precious things." One of those "things" is causing trouble, and Furiosa is getting annoyed with Toast the Knowing's destructive, defiant behaviors. A confrontation ensues, and Toast defends her method of defiance against Furiosa's. </p>
<p>"If there was, even the slightest bit of hope…"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toast the Defiant

**Author's Note:**

> Mad Max Fury Road: Comic spoilers. I haven't fully read the comics, but I've been hearing about quite a bit of the content. This fic pulls on that content for it's basis, which is that Furiosa used to be a "wife" and that she was posted in the vault with the girls to protect them from Rictus. Note also that there's a fair chance there are parts of this fic that conflict with the information provided in the comics (as I haven't read them).

Toast the Knowing hadn’t turned the page on the book she had in her hands for nearly a minute, and Furiosa found her attention drawn this. After the ruckus earlier today, it was likely the girl couldn’t focus, but Furiosa also had no patience to deal with the girl’s shenanigans. The fool had been refusing to eat. These women were some of the very few who ever got full meals. The War Boys lived on gruel and the meager scraps their superiors left unfinished, and this wife had been repeatedly turning her nose up at the lavish meals given to her. Apparently she had first tried to give her rations to the other girls, but their portions were large to begin with. So she’d just left her plates full, until Immortan Joe realized what she was doing. It had only devolved from there.

When Joe beat her for empty trays, she’d hidden the food. This had been before Furiosa had been stationed here; otherwise she would have collected those meals herself to take back to Ace and the other war boys she’d been stationed with in the past. By the time Furiosa had been given guard duty, they had her supervising Toast’s every meal. As punishment, the girl was only provided the gruel, though granted the best of the gruel—the stuff that contained the most protein. Still, she refused to eat. She’d tried to get away with only a bite or two. And then Furiosa had been ordered to hold her while Joe, Miss Giddy, and the Organic Mechanic tried to force feed the girl. It had nearly killed her. She had kicked and fought and eventually inhaled some of the mess. She’d been nearly purple by the time the Organic Mechanic had wrapped his grubby arms around the girl’s diaphragm and jerked inward. The gruel had splattered out, and a meal wasn’t sent in for her for two days. The other girls had offered her pieces of theirs, but she hadn’t taken them. She would only drink water.

Finally, the Organic Mechanic had come up with gruel that was completely liquefied. They’d administered it today. Once again, Furiosa found herself braced behind the girl, her arms hooked behind the girl’s armpits and hands behind her head. She’d had to put her mechanical hand behind her flesh hand to keep from hurting the girl, but now her right hand pulsed with pain after the struggle, sure to develop bruises. It was successful though, if exhausting.

Toast inconspicuously closed the book she hadn’t been reading. She seemed to almost pointedly ignore Furiosa’s gaze as she uncrossed her legs and got out of her chair. She began striding across the room toward the lavatory. Furiosa swung to her feet and intercepted the girl, putting her mechanical arm against the wall to the hallway leading out of their living quarters, barring her way.

“Don’t do anything stupid, girl.” Furiosa said with a low voice, glaring at the idiot.

“I’m a wife now, hardly a girl.” She replied, an almost jeering tone to her voice, just barely contained.

“You’re acting like a sook. Most people don’t get half the food in their lives that you’ve been offered here.”

“I need to use the restroom.” She said, still looking past Furiosa and down the hallway to where they were allowed to relieve themselves.

“Don’t be a fool!” Furiosa warned. “If you keep withering away, they’re going to discard you.”

“I said I need to use the bathroom!” Toast didn’t quite raise her voice, but it was louder than before and she enunciated each word. Still, she didn’t look at her. Furiosa could see the other girls watching them now. Cheedo was cowering uncomfortably next to The Dag who wasn’t quite looking at them, but Furiosa knew she was watching too. Angharad and Capable looked on unabashedly.

“Alright. I’ll come with.” Furiosa said, moving that much more into Toast’s path but lowering her arm.

Toast shook her head. “You can’t. You have to watch the door, make sure Rictus doesn’t barge in here and rape us. That’d be pretty bad, wouldn’t it?” Scorn laced the girl’s voice, which made Furiosa want to knock her a good one.  _She’s not a War Boy,_ Furiosa thought quizzically.  

“Don’t be a fool! I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to make yourself sick, make yourself weak. You’re going to get yourself killed if you keep on like this!”

“So what?!” She snapped, her dark eyes boring into Furiosa now. “I won’t give him a child; I won’t! I won’t live as a ‘pampered  _wife_.’” The last word was heavy with disdain.

“Then you’ll be discarded as a failure and too weak to survive out there.” Furiosa told her bitterly. “There’s no special treatment for fallen wives. No one’s going to take pity on you, pat you on the back. You’ll need what fat you can get to survive out there once you fail him.”

“And do what?! Become an Imperator like you? Become his minion? You’re still just a thing to him! An asset. I  _never_  want to be like  _you!_ ” Toast hissed, her body rolled forward, almost verging to her tiptoes, bridging the distance between them. “You, you’re worse than Rictus and all Joe’s war boys! Because you know, really know how gross this is. You know how twisted it is! And still you help him! You uphold his rule, and that disgusts me!” She spat at the ground between them. Furiosa instinctively took a step back to avoid the saliva getting on her boot; her brows furrowed in frustration.  _Maybe she could be a war boy, if only she’d try_.

There was a long silence then. The tension in Toast’s body slowly drained out. “A part of me wishes I’d have choked on that gruel. It’s not that I don’t want to be alive, but I’d also rather be dead than a cog in the machine that keeps  _that man!_ ” the tension was back as she jerked her finger at the vault door as if Joe were standing behind it, “in his seat of power.” She breathed hard, then said. “And I’d be happy to redistribute my food, Ms. Others Have It Worse. It’s  _him_ that won’t allow it. If you don’t like how he feeds us, hate him, not me.  _That’s_ his choice. This, this is my body” she pounded her chest, “and I put in it what  _I_ choose!  _IT’S MY CHOICE! I DEMAND M—_ “

Furiosa’s hand had swung up and clamped over the woman’s mouth. She held it there until she calmed down; they didn’t need anyone walking in on this. Finally, she removed her hand and stepped out of Toast’s path. “Right. You’re choice. Be my guest.” Her footsteps echoed against the floor as she crossed back to her chair by the door. She sank into it and resumed her default posture and set her eyes at the place on the wall she’d already deemed her point of interest when she’d started this gig. In her peripheral vision, she saw that Toast was still standing in the doorway, posture rigid. After a moment, the woman turned toward her, and Furiosa’s eyes flicked her way.

“If there was, even the slightest bit of hope… hope that there was something else out there, I’d fight for a chance to live a better life. But if living means aiding in whatever… this is… well, I simply wouldn’t be able to live with myself to be any part of it. I want to live; I want to survive. I just don’t think I can. Not like this. Not like you. If I fight for something, it’s going to be for something  _good._ ”

Furiosa’s eyes returned to that point on the wall as the woman pivoted back toward the hallway and continued toward the lavatory, leaving a heavy silence in her wake.

“There’s always hope.” The Splendid Angharad said, quiet but firmly. She touched her stomach then, looking down at it. “Right?”

Furiosa exhaled sharply. “Something like that.”


End file.
